Saturday, November 3, 2012

I was still on reception when he rang, and told me we were going to The Wild Dog Meeting.

It was a 100k drive over the gap and we got there just in time for a counter meal at the Victoria.

At the Memorial Hall, the meeting was already underway, but we sat out on the astro turf and hustled down the reef and beef and the rib eye.

We got to the hall in time for the tea break.

"So you made it through the traps and baits?" quipped a woman from the old valley.

A woman from the new valley told me about her son's marriage to a samoan princess.

In Samoa. And she'd never been overseas before. I smiled in awe.

The meeting reconvened.

I counted a ratio of one government worker/journo to one farmer.

Funny how fear provides a base for power.

And how power needs servicing.

We crawled into town and caught Lawless at the Regent Cinema.

It was a loved up blood soaked roller coaster dipped in moonshine.

We retired to The Twin Cities Motel with shoulders around our ears and stomachs lumped with steak. It's a cheap joint on the Melbourne Road, with hooker hard mattresses, pea green feature walls, and perfect roses in plastic colours.

There were salted chocolate croissants for breakfast, and oysters for lunch.

We watched a group of politicians suffering over a table. My husband needed more sleep.

I stayed back at The Steak Pit to indulge in a spot of mutual fawning with the maitre d.

And a naughty homeopathicaly scaled coffee.

I sat in the sunlight, in a club chair, with a newspaper...and left half way through the piccolo, because it was just all too lovely.

Back in the rosy roundabout, we had a heavy discussion about farming and families.

It was hard to stay fighting surrounded by these gifts.

Having always despised plastic chairs, I am developing a thing for plastic chairs.